Rodimus Prime

Hot Rod was a young, brash, overconfident Autobot stationed at Autobot City in 2005, close to Daniel Witwicky, mentored more or less unwillingly by Kup, and with a reputation as a troublemaker. It was Hot Rod who spotted the Decepticons' stolen shuttle and opened fire, exposing the ruse before Megatron could get inside, and it was Hot Rod who, later that day, grabbed Megatron in an attempt to stop him gunning down Optimus Prime and instead gave him the opening that killed the Autobot leader. Fans have never quite forgiven him for it, which is precisely the point of everything that follows.

Inside Unicron, cornered by Galvatron and being choked to death, Hot Rod took hold of the Autobot Matrix of Leadership. Optimus Prime's voice spoke from within it, telling him to arise as Rodimus Prime, and he was transformed into something larger, older and more powerful. He threw Galvatron into space and opened the Matrix, destroying Unicron from the inside. It should have been a coronation. It functioned more like a sentence.

Rodimus Prime spends the whole of season three failing to want the job. He is still headstrong, but the confidence is gone, replaced by constant second-guessing, visible distress at being in command, and an uneasy partnership with Ultra Magnus, who was Optimus's actual choice. None of it comes from failure. He never lost a war or betrayed a mentor; he simply succeeded the most respected figure in Autobot history overnight and cannot stop measuring himself against him. "The Burden Hardest to Bear" makes it explicit: worn down by thankless politics, he barely reacts when the Decepticons steal the Matrix out of his chest and he reverts to Hot Rod, and only chooses to go and take it back. Kup's closing lesson is that the part of him the Matrix claimed is his forever regardless of who carries it.

Rodimus Prime is substantially larger, stronger and better armed than Hot Rod, and as bearer of the Autobot Matrix of Leadership he can commune with it directly, drawing on the recorded wisdom of past Autobot leaders and learning the true history of the Transformer race in "Five Faces of Darkness". Opening the Matrix released enough energy to destroy Unicron. He retains Hot Rod's speed in vehicle mode and is a capable close-quarters fighter, and in "The Rebirth" he becomes a Targetmaster bonded to the Nebulan sharpshooter Firebolt. The limiting factor is entirely internal. His self-doubt is the flaw the series returns to over and over: he hesitates over decisions, resents the command he holds, and in "Dark Awakening" hands the Matrix back to a resurrected Optimus Prime at the first opportunity, visibly relieved to be Hot Rod again. He also has an unfortunate habit of saying tactless things at the worst possible moment.

• Optimus Prime: the predecessor whose death he blames himself for and whose standard he cannot meet; he gives the Matrix back the instant Prime appears to return.
• Kup: his mentor and the voice of experience, who explains the burden of command to others on his behalf and delivers the lesson that closes "The Burden Hardest to Bear".
• Galvatron: the enemy he made in Unicron's belly, hurled into space rather than killed, and who returns to reignite a war everyone assumed was over.
• Ultra Magnus: co-leader and constant reminder that Optimus originally chose Magnus, a partnership Rodimus finds openly uncomfortable.
• Arcee: a steadying presence and a relationship the show keeps ambiguous, sometimes antagonistic and sometimes more than friendly.

Rodimus Prime barely exists in Marvel's US Transformers. Hot Rod turns up late in the run, arriving from Nebulos as a Targetmaster bonded to Firebolt, and serves as an ordinary soldier under Optimus Prime, who never dies in the way the film depicts and never has to be replaced. He is never given the Matrix and never becomes Rodimus Prime; he ends the run as one of many Autobots killed on Klo and revived by the Last Autobot. Rodimus Prime instead lives almost entirely in Marvel UK's future timelines, where he is a far darker figure than the cartoon's. There he becomes obsessive about Galvatron's disappearance, neglects Cybertron to hunt him and lets Shockwave take over the planet in his absence, and puts a bounty on Galvatron's head that unleashes the bounty hunter Death's Head on the 1980s. Worse, Unicron's essence is sealed inside the Matrix after "The Legacy of Unicron!", meaning Rodimus carries the chaos-bringer in his chest for centuries; it possesses him outright in 2010, and by 2356 he is a withered, poisoned old ruin lecturing a student on evil. Marvel UK also gives him a term of office of over five hundred years, against the cartoon's eleven months. The single bleakest version appears in "Rhythms of Darkness!", an alternate timeline where Galvatron kills him and strings his corpse up between the towers of the World Trade Center.

In the cartoon his time as leader ends in "The Return of Optimus Prime, Part 2": infected by the Hate Plague, he is beaten by the resurrected Optimus, who forcibly removes the Matrix and changes him back into Hot Rod for good. He carries on as a soldier, is flung across the galaxy to Nebulos by the Plasma Energy Chamber in "The Rebirth", becomes a Targetmaster bonded to Firebolt, and helps defend Cybertron from Galvatron. Japanese continuity continues past that point: in Headmasters, Alpha Trion recharges the Matrix and Hot Rod becomes Rodimus Prime again after Optimus sacrifices himself to stabilise Vector Sigma, and when Scorponok's scheme leaves Cybertron a burnt-out husk, Rodimus concludes his time is over, passes leadership to Fortress Maximus and leaves with Kup and Blurr to find the Transformers a new world.

• Judd Nelson voiced Hot Rod and Rodimus Prime in the 1986 movie; Dick Gautier took over Rodimus for the third season of the cartoon.
• Fan and parental backlash to killing Optimus Prime in the movie was severe enough that the production reversed it, first with the fake resurrection in "Dark Awakening" and then permanently in the two-part "The Return of Optimus Prime", which ends Rodimus's tenure and hands the Matrix back.
• He may hold the record for most names of any US Transformers character: Hot Rod, Rodimus Prime, Rodimus Major and plain Rodimus, the later variants driven by Hasbro's inability to secure the "Hot Rod" trademark.
• In Japan he is Hot Rodimus and Rodimus Convoy rather than Hot Rod and Rodimus Prime.
• At just under a year, Rodimus Prime served the shortest term as Autobot commander of anyone except Ultra Magnus, against Optimus Prime's eight to ten million years.
• "The Burden Hardest to Bear" takes its title from the film The Yakuza's rendering of the Japanese concept of giri; writer Michael Charles Hill also drew on Hagakure, the 18th-century treatise on bushido.
• In The Transformers: The Movie, Hot Rod never transforms the same way twice.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• Length of command: under a year in the US cartoon, over five hundred years in at least one Marvel UK future timeline.
• Whether he becomes Rodimus Prime at all: Marvel US never gives Hot Rod the Matrix, so the transformation is confined to the film, the cartoon and Marvel UK's future strips.
• The Matrix itself: Marvel UK has Unicron's essence trapped inside it and progressively corrupting Rodimus, a threat the cartoon's benevolent Matrix never carries.
• Post-Rebirth continuity: the US cartoon leaves him permanently as Hot Rod, while the Japanese Headmasters series restores him to Rodimus Prime and then has him abdicate to Fortress Maximus and depart Cybertron.
• Naming: Hot Rod, Rodimus Prime, Rodimus Major and Rodimus are all used for the same character, with the variations driven by trademark availability rather than story.